New York City's forgotten history of wild secession attempts resurfaces after Brexit

"The attempt of a demagogue is first made to inflame all the passions of the ignorant and needy to the highest point of exasperation," exclaimed the New York Times. "[A]nd then the mischief-maker, to protect himself, protests, with mock meekness, against the natural fruits of the seed he has just been sowing."

The nation's newspaper of record isn't talking about presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump here. This report comes from January 1861, and it was a slap at New York City Mayor Fernando Wood's thoughts on secession.

The idea of secession has been swirling in the ether over the past week, thanks to Great Britain's vote to leave the European Union -- a shock result that Trump has heartily endorsed. Because of "Brexit," Scotland is making noise once again about leaving the United Kingdom, and even Texas secessionists are talking about there being momentum for a "Texit" from the U.S. Then there are the 100,000-plus Londoners who, in the wake of Britain's EU vote, have signed a petition calling for London to become an independent city-state.

The latter movement has brought the long-forgotten Wood's name back into the news, with activists reminding anyone who will listen that metropolitan attempts at secession are nothing new. The New York Times hit out at the Democratic mayor 155 years ago because Wood was a Southern sympathizer who had just called for Manhattan and other parts of the city to break free of the United States and ally itself with "our aggrieved brethren of the Slave States."

"The miserable sophistries and puerilities of the [mayor's] Message ... are not really deserving argument," the Times concluded.

But Mayor Wood, a Democrat, thought he was onto something. For years New York City had been a slave-trading center with strong ties to the South. And in the just-concluded presidential election, Republican Abraham Lincoln, who was viewed with horror by Southerners, had lost the city vote.

Wood's brother, Benjamin, a Democratic congressman and the editor of the New York Daily News, backed Fernando's secession plan. The Daily News told readers that in the event of a Civil War, a white New York laborer could expect to be drafted into the army and forced to "leave his family destitute and unprotected while he goes forth to free the negro, who being free, will compete with him in labor."

A month after Mayor Wood proposed that New York become a "free city," and with Southern states beginning to secede from the Union, President-Elect Lincoln visited New York City. This led the mayor to strike a conciliatory note. "If I refer to this topic, Sir, it is because New York is deeply interested," he said, addressing Lincoln during a public address. "The present political divisions have sorely afflicted her people. All her material interests are paralyzed. Her commercial greatness is endangered."

Lincoln responded graciously and with humility. "As to my wisdom in conducting affairs so as to tend to the preservation of the Union, I fear too great confidence may have been placed in me," he said. "I am sure I bring a heart devoted to the work. There is nothing that could ever bring me to consent -- willingly to consent -- to the destruction of this Union, in which not only the great city of New York but the whole country acquired its greatness."

New York City, needless to say, remained in the Union. Fernando Wood's flirtation with secession had little impact on his successful political career, but Lincoln's postmaster-general prohibited the distribution of his brother's newspaper through the mail, forcing the Daily News to cease publication for more than a year. (Benjamin Wood's editorials arguably played a role in the infamous New York draft riots of 1863.)

The idea of secession has never fully died in the Big Apple. A little over 100 years after Mayor Wood's call for a "free city," novelist Norman Mailer ran for mayor and recommended New York City split off from the rest of the state. He wanted the city to become not its own independent entity but the U.S.'s 51st state. And this week, a New York councilman called on the borough of Staten Island to go it alone, insisting "bureaucrats from other places are making policy that doesn't always put us first." The last time Staten Island considered going it alone, in the 1990s, one wag likened it to "Gummo leaving the Marx Brothers."